All is not me

Having my iPhone not quite working properly over the past few days made me realise just how hooked into the ‘online world’ I am. I think I have a good balance though, it’s not like I spend all day staring at screens of information, cherry-picking things I’m interested in, things I might find useful in the future, or things that I think others might want to read.

Because if I did that, then I’d probably (knowing myself as well as I do) have to have a system or two in place to cope with that “information overload”.

So, for example, I might use Instapaper to track blog posts that I want to read later (either from the website or using the iPhone app), or articles that might feature in the ISTC newsletter column I write. I would probably be monitoring RSS feeds to find the articles or blog posts, checking for things for either personal perusal or professional pondering, or perhaps I’d be using a Twitter client on my iPhone that supported Instapaper to capture some of the links that people post there.

I could use del.icio.us to store links to useful bits and bobs that I might want to refer to later on, and I may even use Tumblr (which I could also use on my iPhone) as a means to capture those items of digital detritus that zip past me every day.

Of course it wouldn’t ALL be about consuming information, I do produce some things myself and if I wanted I could use Flickr to host my photos (and maybe use the excellent Flickit app for my iPhone to upload photos as well), not mention the not inconsiderable amount of waffle I’ve posted to a couple of the blogs I’ve setup over the years (I don’t just blog, I write, and tell tales).

Speaking of waffle, if I really wanted to have an outlet for the randomness that all of this information prompts in my head, I guess Twitter would be the place for that, and just because I like to be organised I’d probably set up a separate Twitter account for my professional ramblings as well.

And to make sure I’m properly organised I would need a calendar and a way to track my tasks (both at work and at home).

I’d probably use Google Calendar for appointments and as Remember the Milk have an excellent iPhone app, I guess it would make sense to use that service to track my tasks. Similarly I’d probably look to Simplenote to provide a central place to store snippets of useful information, and they too have an excellent iPhone app which, considering I have my iPhone on me at all times, would be very useful.

Of course that would all be just too much hassle to deal with and make me look like I’m some kind of geek that spends his life connected to the internet, whereas I actually spend most of my time sleeping, eating, reading books and partying.

Honest.